»I’ve never met a composer with a more innate empathy for human voices than Aribert Reimann. I’m guessing that it has something to do with the fact that he grew up immersed in singing. His mother was a singer and he often enthused about her deep, warm alto voice. He began his career as a singer, learning singing roles at the Deutsche Oper Berlin when he had just left school in 1956. Well into the 1980s Aribert was still a sought-after lied accompanist to singers like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, for whom he wrote LEAR in 1978, his best-known opera.

And that was how we met. It was at a premiere in 1981 during the Berliner Festwochen, and it was the first in a string of unforgettable lieder evenings over the years – many of which featured art songs by Robert Schumann, whose stuff we both loved. When you’re rehearsing Aribert’s music, you’re immediately struck by his knowledge of different voices. You never have to strain to hit notes. Even when he has a full-blown symphony orchestra going, the voices never get smothered. Quite the opposite actually: when you’re singing to his music you may find yourself accessing new coloratura and new means of expression that you can then use when singing in operas from the traditional repertoire.

At least, that was my experience when I was singing Cassandra in his TROADES opera, a role that he wrote specially for me. When Cassandra first appears onstage, she has no words to sing in the normal sense: you have this woman screaming out her solitary madness in coloratura that no one can understand. It fits perfectly for a woman uttering prophecies that no one takes seriously. After doing that role I found myself being more expressive in the way I sang coloratura in other roles. TROADES is also a great example of how Aribert Reimann is able to harness the character of each singer in the music he composes. Each of the female roles in the piece has its own recognisable musical profile and every singer has the rein to let her specific qualities shine. That may be the reason there was never a competitiveness issue, even with multiple divas involved. Viva Aribert!«